Wednesday, 15 November 2017

This is this year's birthday cake for myself. Very nice, moist and chocolatey. I especially like the cream cheese icing. I think I prefer it chilled straight from the fridge since the icing is on the soft side when at room temperature which caused a bit of problem when I brought it to work for my colleagues. The cling film covering it stuck on it so much that it didn't look too appetising.

Sunday, 15 October 2017

I never knew that making pilau rice is so easy. Probably the only thing hard about it is assembling the myriad spices you need. Pilau rice, if you must know, is the spiced fragrant rice accompanying Indian dishes. There so many variations of it much depending on how colourful or how much spices you want in it.

I love how easy it is to cook this resulting in fluffy and soft fragrant rice. Highly recommended!

Friday, 15 September 2017

Okay I'm not too familiar with this Parmesan Chicken over on this side of the pond. I would assume this is name is popular over in the US. Over here it is called other things like chicken schnitzel or escalope. They may or may not have parmesan cheese but sure does make it very tasty. Some other variations of these involves brining the meat and also putting some tomato sauce and mozarella on top before grilling it for a few minutes. So those would be my next experiments in the mean time I leave you this recipe which I got from the lovely Ina Garten over at the Food Network.

Tuesday, 15 August 2017

Here's another version of the classic chocolate chip cookie with emphasis on being thick and chewy. This recipe is adapted from The Best New Recipe of Cook's Illustrated. There is an optional step on chilling the dough to make it spread less when baking. I prefer to chill it after balling it since it is easier to do so rather than the other way around.

Saturday, 15 July 2017

Tried jazzing up the brownies with fruit and nuts. So I got this recipe from the BBC Good Food magazine of years gone. I don't even know what month and year it came out. All I had is the torn out page with the recipe. It turned out quite nice being a quite different variation of the usual brownies. Although I noticed that it isn't as popular as the ubiquitous intensely chocolatey brownies. Nevertheless, quite a good change from the usual especially if you have some dried fruits and nuts to use up in your pantry.

In a saucepan, heat the butter, sugar, chocolate, and milk (or cranberry juice) gently while stirring constantly until the chocolate is melted and everything is well combined. Remove from heat and cool completely.

Whisk in the eggs one at a time.

Add the flour, cinnamon, and dried cranberries. Mix well.

Pour in half the batter to the prepared baking tin. Sprinkle the pistachio over and then pour the rest of the batter.

Bake in the oven for about 30-35 minutes or until a skewer poked in the middle comes out with no wet batter.

Monday, 15 May 2017

There are many variations in cooking pancit canton. You can be as elaborate as you want with cooking/blanching each vegetable to something as simple as a all-in-one cooking method. This version of mine is a happy compromise. It is very similar to what I do with pancit bihon but the main difference is in the type of noodles used. The one here is wheat-based which is certainly more flavourful than the bland rice noodle bihon. Also, liver and mushrooms are used lending difference in the filling. Do serve this with lemon juice to foil the saltiness of the sauce.

As with most of my recipes, this is a work in progress so I will be updating this from time to time.

Saturday, 15 April 2017

This is another hit from my trusted The New Best Recipe cookbook from Cook's Illustrated. I especially love the intense chocolate taste of this cookie while remaining quite soft and chewy. I do have to go grocery shopping for 50% cocoa content dark chocolates since my baking chocolates in my pantry is always 70%. The coffee in my opinion can be omitted since it really made the flavour very intense. But other than that they were very nice cookies indeed.

Wednesday, 15 March 2017

One of my favourite comfort food is Bread and Butter Pudding. It has that ability to be classified as both a dessert or a snack depending on how you serve or how much you eat.

A lot of bread puddings I have the experience of buying in shops are too stodgy. They resemble more like slightly sweetened thick chewy bread. But not this one. I do love this recipe because is lighter and the ratio of the egg to milk/cream is just right. Plus the sugar is just right - not too sweet. I got this from an old ripped-off page of the BBC Good Food magazine with the recipe coming from the chef Paul Heathcote. Thanks Paul.

I know I burned some of the pudding top but believe me it's not that badly burnt. It's probably just the lighting angle of the picture. Not a problem for me because I'm partial to slightly charred food!

Make the custard - mix the cream, milk, eggs, vanilla, and caster sugar in a bowl.

Strain the cream mixture over the bread slices and leave to soak for about 5 minutes.

Put the dish in a larger roasting tin in the oven. While the oven rack (with roasting tin) is about a third out of the oven, carefully pour hot water in the roasting tin to come halfway up the side of the dish.

Bake for 30 minutes until the top is golden and the custard is lightly set.

Remove the dish from the roasting tin and leave to cool for about 15 minutes.

Preheat grill to the highest setting.

Generously dust the top of the pudding with sifted icing sugar and glaze under the grill until golden brown. If it starts to puff up remove and leave to cool a little longer before returning to the grill.
Note: It will be more efficient if you use a cooking torch to glaze the icing sugar.

[Optional] Brush the top with the warmed apricot jam. Serve with clotted cream or warm custard.

Wednesday, 15 February 2017

One of the ways Filipinos flavour and preserve fish (especially bangus or milkfish) is by marinating and drying them. One such technique is called 'daing'. By which the fish is marinated for hours and optionally dried out in the sun afterwards.

I don't have the luxury of having the delicious bangus in our neck of the woods. So I go for the nearest one available - sea bass. The one advantage of sea bass over the bangus is its got less bones. So there's less to be wary about.

It's been years since i have marinated bangus and I have forgotten that it takes several hours or overnight to make the vinegar-based marinate to permeate the fish completely. Otherwise, once you've pan-fired it, the flavour is hardly noticeable. So make sure to marinate it for a long time - I reckon at least 8 hours or overnight.

Tuesday, 17 January 2017

It's that time of the year again for my husband's birthday. Another excuse to experiment with one of the listed cake recipes in my to-bake list. I chose a caramel cake because I know my husband's fond of caramel. So Corinne's wonderful looking Filipino-style caramel cake recipe gets taken out.

It is essentially an airy chiffon cake with a pourable icing. The cake was good although I would have liked the caramel icing to be a little bit sweeter so I adjusted the recipe. And be very careful in caramelizing the sugar. I found out it burns very easily after it starts turning brown. Also, I didn't bother with cutting the cake in half horizontally and ice the middle. I thought there was not enough icing to spread around. This step is marked optional because our cake was just fine as it is.